Annihilation, p.1
Annihilation, page 1
Title: Seven Archangels: Annihilation
Author: Jane Lebak
Copyright 2008
Chapter 1
The mirrors around the semi-circular studio reflected endless variations of a dancing angel, the only angel to have cried when she received her name. Unleashing the power of a tornado, Remiel spun to music loud enough to rattle al twenty windows. Arms, legs and six gold wings pumping to
the rhythm, she whirled about the room.
During a pause in the cacophony, Remiel turned to find Saraquael, of the choir of Dominions, standing against the corner. The volume lowered
instantly, and then the music stopped as the frown of her previous concentration transformed into a grin.
He inclined his head, as if to say, You can continue.
She opened her hands, communicating reassurance in the nonverbal manner of angels. Then, a smile stil adorning her angular features, she
shrugged.
"What were you playing?" Saraquael, like Remiel, was one of the Seven archangels that stand directly before God.
"I'm not sure. Israfel said it's a trend poised to dominate American radio, so she asked me to figure out if it fel under her dominion as the angel of music." She rubbed a hand through her cropped hair, then along the gentle slope of her neck. "I can dance to it, so I'd say yes." As she lowered her arm, a half dozen bracelets jangled. "What brings you?"
"I just wanted to stop by." He gestured at the dance floor. "Keep going."
"I'm done." Her clothing changed from a black leotard into jeans and a red t-shirt, but her hair remained the same, standing away from her neck to reveal a row of piercings in each ear. "Are you sure everything is al right?"
Saraquael squinted, his six teal-speckled wings opening. "Is something the matter?"
"I just… I get a sense, a danger." She shook her head. "It's probably nothing. But the universe keeps vibrating with tension like an overwound violin string."
Saraquael moved closer to her, concern clouding his green eyes. "Do you have any idea why?"
She shook her head. "No, and I'm tired of banging my head against the problem. The music didn't make it go away." Her eyes glinted like garnets as she slapped his arm. "Tag. Find me."
She vanished. Saraquael grinned before flashing away too.
He appeared in a dark exhibit hal of the New York Aquarium at Coney Island. Remiel's presence, although dampened, sparkled like a repressed
giggle. He let his attention expand to cover the whole hal , al the tourists. Focusing on one end of the hal , he concentrated in turn on each of the people and things. He turned his attention to one golden fish in a lighted tank. Gotcha!
Remiel's laugh sparked in his mind, and again she vanished. The whole search had taken five seconds.
He fol owed. This time, the place where Remiel felt strongest was a barred-spiral galaxy about 700 mil ion light years from the Earth. He "felt"
around for her signature, the wild smile and the trail her thoughts left in reality like the wake cut by a lake-faring sailboat. He could sense how compressed she wasn't, how she shed power like a star, how she almost wanted him to find her. Her heart felt like a beacon, but for the moment he
couldn't settle on a method of pinpointing her.
Al right, he prayed. How am I going to do this?
It's your game, God replied. We already know I know how to find her, Saraqua'li.
Saraquael laughed.
"Need some help?"
Saraquael turned his attention to a square-jawed angel with only two green wings. "Hey, Michael. Remiel's trail leads to here, but I'm stumped."
It had taken ten seconds so far. Michael added his strength to Saraquael's, who used the Archangel's power to enhance his senses. As he opened
his heart, Michael served as a lens to focus his thoughts, and in that moment Saraquael felt one star out of place. He targeted it with his wil . Tag!
"You stinker." Remiel appeared before them as the manufactured star system vanished. "You'd never have found me without help."
Michael ran a hand through saffron-toned hair. "It would only have taken him a minute or so."
"Yeah, I'm sure." Remiel smacked him on the shoulder. "You're it!"
Both Remiel and Saraquael vanished, and Michael flashed after in pursuit.
~~~~
The Heavenly sunlight streamed through a window in the library of the Cherub Gabriel, lighting the pages of the book holding al his attention. He
remained in a hush interrupted only by turning pages.
Some people don't understand why angels might read books. For himself, Gabriel didn't understand how Heaven could be Heaven without them.
Gabriel didn't look up when Raphael entered the room, just continued reading while extending a welcome to the Seraph. His soul flooded into
Raphael's, and the two of them mingled for a moment with Gabriel's Cherub nature curling around Raphael's Seraph-soul in a perfect fit, before it
withdrew al the stronger.
Of the nine choirs of angels, only Seraphim and Cherubim could bond in that fashion to even out their extremes. The ordinarily sedate and logical
Cherubim could counterbalance the zeal and fiery love of the Seraphim, while the Seraphim gave to the Cherubim from their excess drive and
enthusiasm.
The nine choirs each embodied a different aspect of God, typifying that characteristic and returning love to God in a way uniquely its own, a
diamond with nine facets. As God's light filtered over them al , they lifted and amplified God's infinity in their own ways, Thrones for example by ful y engaging in worship, or Dominions by their understanding of systems and strategy. No one angel could perceive al of God simultaneously, of
course—but working together, al of them could hope to learn one thing or another about God and over the course of eternity perhaps—perhaps—
know him in entirety. At least, so the Cherubim hoped.
Raphael's brown eyes gleamed. Gabriel final y looked away from the book.
Concentrating, he reached through their bond to feel Raphael's request: a group of the angels were playing a creation-wide game of hide-and-
seek, and Raphael was going too. Would Gabriel like to come?
Gabriel glanced back at his book, at his notes. Michael was concerned about some unusual activity in Hel , and being the investigators of the nine
choirs of angels, the Cherubim wanted to figure out what Satan was keeping so shrouded. General y the demons would brag, but right now the
highest-order demons were strutting around creation with only a glint in their eyes, as if they could already taste a victory, and it didn't make sense.
No clues. Whatever they'd planned, they'd planned it big.
Then he looked at Raphael, one of the most powerful Seraphim and his fel ow angel among the Seven who stood directly before God. The Seraph sparkled at him. He was tal and broad-shouldered even as Gabriel was slight; soft-eyed where Gabriel was angular; chocolate-haired where
Gabriel was blond—and yet despite al that, they resembled one another. Gabriel's grey eyes glinted.
Would it be al right if I went? he prayed.
God told him it would make no difference.
Gabriel closed his book, and then both were gone.
By now the game had picked up a large number of players: six of the Seven, plus the leaders of three of the nine choirs. A "who's who" of the angelic world would have been fil ed with their identities. They hid as flowers in a field, raindrops in a thunderstorm, a painting in a museum, a new Jovian moon, an electron, and a word in a book.
Gabriel had just been located as the PM dot on a digital clock accidental y set for AM, so he joined Remiel and Raphael in a New England barn. He
sprawled on the ground floor looking up at Remiel perched on a bale of hay in the loft. The hay's spicy scent mixed with the horsey odor, and the air carried a harbinger chil . Outside, the leaves had just begun to paint themselves orange and red.
"The game was a good idea." Raphael sat on one of the beams above the loft.
Remiel smiled her thanks.
Raphael nodded. "God told me to come—that we should enjoy this world to the ful est for as long as we have it." He paused. "Although now that I think about it, that was an odd thing to say. We don't have to live like humans do, as if every day might be the last."
Shadows haunted Remiel's sharp eyes. "Maybe an indicator of the end times? I've been uneasy."
Raphael glanced between his knees at Gabriel. "What do you think?"
Gabriel was staring out one smudged window at the cloudless sky. "It can't be a terrorist attack they're plotting, because they'd brag about that, and the guardians in the affected areas would know."
Remiel giggled behind her hand.
"You know how Cherubim get when they're engaged with a problem?" Raphael winked at her. "I figured I'd at least try to draw out our absent-minded professor with a theory question."
Gabriel focused suddenly. "A theory question?"
"Forget it."
Gabriel leaned against a hay bale and stared at the rafters holding up the roof, tracing the lines of force in his mind.
Remiel asked what Raphael had been up to lately, and Raphael said he'd prevented a convenience store robbery by three armed bandits.
"Three armed bandits," Remiel drawled, going semi-solid and plucking a smal handful from a hay bale. "How many of them were there?"
Raphael tilted his head. "Three."
"Three three-armed bandits." Remiel's voice distor ted as she tried not to giggle. "That's nine arms total."
Raphael's shoulders were shaking, and he looked down with his eyes closed and his lips pursed. "I wonder how they al met up. Maybe some kind
of three-armed support group?'
"They have twelve-step programs for that sort of thing?"
"To have that," Raphael said, struggling to keep the laughter from his voice, "they'd need four three-legged bandits, and there weren't any of those."
Gabriel looked away from the wooden beams and directly at them both. "What exactly are you two talking about?"
Remiel sprinkled a few pieces of hay in the air and flashed them over Gabriel so they dropped onto his hair, then passed through his insubstantial
form.
Raphael laughed out loud. He swung from the rafter so he hung from his knees, then grasped the wood and flipped to dismount.
"I'm so mean," Remiel said. "It's not fair to do that to the sense-of-humor-impaired."
"He does so have a sense of humor!" Raphael exclaimed, turning back to Remiel.
Remiel hurled a double handful of hay at Raphael.
Even Cherubim can't foretel the future, but sometimes you don't have to be psychic to know what's about to happen. Gabriel sent his awareness out
through the entire hayloft and noted the exact position of every bale of hay, every piece of straw, every bit of rope.
The Blizzard of 1888 might have resembled what happened next if only snow were green and gold.
Raphael flashed up into the hayloft, semi-solid and armed with hay. Remiel shrieked as he tackled her. The ensuing furor saw hay tumbling over the
side of the loft while twelve flailing wings thumped against the roof, the bales, and the floorboards.
One of the horses looked at Gabriel. "Don't ask me," said the Cherub. "I just fol owed them here."
Gabriel flashed up onto one of the beams so he didn't become a friendly fire statistic courtesy of the hay shrapnel.
From behind him he heard, "Oh no, you don't," and abruptly he was nabbed between Remiel and Raphael, who catching him off-guard were able to force him solid. They shoved him into the loose piles.
Bril iant with joy, Raphael laughed. Gabriel discharged enough energy to blow them off, then fixed his eyes on the Seraph. He drank in Raphael's
soul-fire, empowering himself and at the same time getting giddy. He could feel God smiling on them, laughing along with the game. Grinning,
Gabriel tore hay from the closest bale and jumped Raphael, shoving him into the sliding straw and dodging the return vol eys.
Raphael struggled away from him. "You lunatic! On the best day of your life I could pummel you into the ground!" And Gabriel, knowing in his heart how much power he real y had, replied by tackling and pinning him.
Remiel sang aloud, "She'l be buried deep in hay-seeds when she comes—when she comes!" More angels arrived, more bedlam ensued, and
Gabriel ached from the laughing. It was good. He suspected it would take several hours to comb the last straw bits out of his wings and hair, but so far he'd avoided having it stuffed down the back of his shirt, although not for want of Raphael trying.
Raphael whistled, bringing everyone up short. "Someone's coming."
"Tag!" Remiel slapped Gabriel on the shoulder. "You're it! Everybody run!"
Al the other angels flashed out of the hay-piled barn except for Remiel. "Say," she said, "would you mind…you know, taking care of this?" Then she vanished too.
Gabriel shook his head, considered the piles of loose hay al over the loft and the barn floor (knee-deep in some places) and recal ed where al of the baled hay had been at the start. A moment's concentration returned every blade of grass, every piece of hay, every sliver of straw, back into the place it had been when they'd begun.
"Sure," Gabriel said to God, shifting his sight to the Vision of God, breathtaking and even more joyous than Raphael up to his waist in flying hay.
"She starts the fight, but whose responsibility is it to make sure everything gets cleaned up again?"
God smiled at him.
He glanced around to make sure everything had its right place, then straightened one string where it looked less tight than it had been when they
started. As the farmer opened the door, Gabriel vanished, leaving the man to wonder why the hay scent was so strong this afternoon and why the
horses looked vaguely amused.
~~~
Now it was Gabriel's turn to find everyone.
He opened his senses. Immediately Gabriel felt Raphael's presence like a beacon, but it wasn't fair to single him out first. Raphael's soul was
attached to his so tightly that at times they seemed like one angel. Bonded together, both were stronger and more balanced than if they'd remained
separate and extreme, but at the same time, it meant Raphael couldn't possibly hide.
It wouldn't be sportsmanlike to nab him first.
Avoiding Raphael's presence for now, Gabriel released his senses and picked up echoes of al the angels, though not al of them were easily
identifiable. The strongest was a signature of Michael's power, but when he traveled to the location (a dresser drawer in an apartment in Prague) it was only a ring: a sigil. Michael had divested part of his soul into the object, giving it his power even though it wasn't him.
That was a good ruse. Gabriel pocketed the ring and turned his attention outward again, and again the clearest sense he got was Raphael.
Raphael had taken the form of a chain link on a park swing, and he vibrated with tension as he awaited capture. At least two others were nearby.
Gabriel coalesced at the park, invisible in the October air as he settled to the ground. Children shrieked as they raced through the equipment while in a field alongside, three older boys played Frisbee.
Gabriel's mouth twitched. The others were waiting for him, but real y, it was just a game. He would tag Raphael and send him to get the rest of them.
No one would object, and there were books in the library, or maybe an afternoon ahead where he could find an unused living room with comfortable
chairs.
Raphael zinged him through the bond. Get your head out of the clouds.
Gabriel clenched his heart back to himself.
It's just a game. Raphael sounded frustrated. God can keep the universe running without you for ten minutes.
Gabriel folded his arms, and his grey eyes darkened even as he pul ed his six grey wings tighter to his back.
Why bother playing a game if you're going to be thinking about ten other things when you're with us? You might as wel not even be here!
Gabriel cut the contact and released himself to find the others.
Once he focused his perception on Remiel, he immediately—and not unexpectedly—found two signatures. He "felt" through both of them, each
terribly close, observing rather than probing: one of the two was evil, and Gabriel didn't want to touch it.
Remiel's twin.
